Prince George Turns 1...

Could he be going on a flight to Australia- and get there in 5 hours? 

Prince George, the baby that has everything! He even had around 4,000 presents from across the world  to celebrate his first birthday yesterday. This year he went on his first royal tour, to Australia and New Zealand. In the future, could our future king reach Australia in 5 hours? It sounds very science fiction - but it's really not! 

Concorde was one of the fastest planes in our history, it was decommissioned in 2003. Since then supersonic travel became a thing of the past. But work has now begun on a passenger aircraft - one created by the European Space Agency, to create a hypersonic passenger plane. It's designed to fly 5 times faster than the speed of sound and six times faster than a standard airliner. 

This isn't the first time hypersonic flight has been attempted. In 1960, tests took place on an aircraft that was called X-15, half plane and half missile. The craft carried one pilot and flew for 90 seconds until the fuel burnt out. The creators of the X-15 thought that this would herald a new era of high-speed civil aviation. However more than 50 years later a hypersonic passenger plane has yet to be tested or even built. 

Now a team led by the European Space Agency, known as Lapcat, are working on an aircraft called the A2, which could take up where the X-15 left off. Could this herald a new - real era of passenger air travel. 

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Prince George Turns 1! His official Birthday pictures...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GEORGE!

#SummerofScience Day 6

Why microbes could be changing the world's weather patterns?

Microbes are everywhere, both good and bad, and scientists at NASA believe that these microbes could be changing our weather patterns, both  here in the UK and worldwide.  

Research has been carried out across NASA compounds. One these in Texas.To carry out the experiment they send up, into space, a balloon and a mesh which collects the samples of the microbes. They collect samples at heights 70,000 ft to 10,000 ft. Scientists have analysed the aerodynamic properties of these microbes and they have found that these particular molecules can be suspended in our atmosphere for up to three weeks. 

A process called "Ice Nucleation" is happening all of the time in our atmosphere, this means that any solid particles in our atmosphere makes it a lot easier for ice to form around the solid particle however big or small this is.

 For crystals, whatever sort they are need something solid to form around, if this happens then the ice crystals can be a lot bigger than without the solid particle (in this case the microbe). When ice forms in our atmosphere, clouds form. This will eventually make it rain. 

So, if there are more microbes in the atmosphere it is easier for ice, therefore clouds to form. More clouds, mean that it will rain more.